I recently attended a Diwali celebration in Connecticut.  The event secured the major essentials of a second generation, Indian-American function: a late start [working to our advantage], a troupe of tweens and teens singing and dancing, their fawning parents frantically photographing and videotaping them, and a dynamic, devotional group of musicians that energized the audience through call-response worship.  The crowd of several hundred people was clearly engaged, entertained, and festive as tablas drummed, harmoniums crooned, little children scurried, and volunteers prepared consecrated food.

Suddenly, with no warning, the music stopped.  Whispers were heard at the front of the room.  Older men began brandishing their mobiles and walking rapidly.  We latecomers seated in the back craned our necks to understand this unscheduled interruption to our program.  Within minutes, a state gubernatorial candidate appeared.  Many of us were stunned.  A community member introduced the candidate, shamelessly solicited our votes, and entreated the priest to perform a blessing.  Clearly perplexed, the priest spontaneously mustered several chants of OM for victory.  The candidate took advantage of the captive audience, apologized for his intrusion, implored us to vote, presumably for him, and departed.  Reactions were mixed: although some in the congregation took offense to his blatant electioneering during a religious event, most appreciated his audacity and interest in cultivating the Hindu community for political action.

I began to wonder whether President Obama could ever visit a Hindu temple.  Questions of religious affiliation have plagued him since his candidacy.  First came the allegations that he shared the separatist black Christian theology of his former pastor Jeremiah A. Wright (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/us/politics/29text-obama.html?pagewanted=all).  Candidate Obama skilfully transcended that obstacle only to be confronted with insinuations that he was a Muslim, an uncharacteristically deplorable taint on the otherwise respectable career of his rival Hillary Clinton who deployed his middle name “Hussein” for a time at her political rallies.  In response, Barak Obama neither attended mosques nor publicly met with Muslim or Arab leaders throughout the first year of his presidency (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/us/politics/19muslim.html).  Most recently, the question of President Obama’s religion surfaced on a trip to India when the White House first announced, then rescinded, his decision to visit the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India.  Given that the protocol for entering a Sikh gurudwara requires the covering of one’s head, some suspected that the White House feared that the American public would not distinguish between Sikhs and Muslims (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/world/asia/20india.html).  At times, it appears that Academic Barak Obama, the reputed constitutional law professor and author of the phrase “teachable moment,” sits uneasily with President Barak Obama, the politician mindful of public perception.

However, one inconsistency recurs about President Obama’s willingness to engage Muslims.  While abroad, President Obama has visited mosques in Turkey (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/07/obama-in-istanbul-visits-_n_183912.html) and in Indonesia (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/world/asia/10prexy.html?_r=1).  This disproves the contentions of people who find him cautious about reaching out to Muslims.  Moreover, his administration appointed a special representative to Muslim communities around the world through the State Department (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/125492.htm).

It seems as if several inferences can be drawn.  Perhaps, the Administration feels that President Obama’s overtures to the Muslim community best occur abroad.  Perhaps, the Administration calculates that political backlash may result from President Obama donning any external physical symbols that could be perceived as unfamiliar.  It is not quite clear whether this unfamiliarity encompasses any tradition outside of Judaism and Christianity or specifically refers to Islam.  The question is: why?

It is illustrative to contrast President Obama’s relationship with religion to President Bush’s.  In 2000, President Bush and his campaign advisors virtually guaranteed that the electorate knew about his foray into alcohol throughout early adulthood, his consequent mishaps with the law, his detailed beseech for forgiveness, i.e. redemption, and his publicized conversion from Episcopalian to United Methodist Christianity.  An evangelical himself, Mr. Bush appealed to the evangelical masses newly searching for political expression.  After the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Bush’s vocabulary drew deeply from Christian themes, with his “axis of evil” and “crusade” against terrorists.  There was no ambivalence about his faith.  In fact, Mr. Bush’s prolix Christian imagery led to concerns that he marginalized Muslim Americans, a charge that he stubbornly denied.

In turn, Muslim American political action committees have labored to position themselves as American patriots while criticizing American foreign policy.  President Bush’s unflinching support for Israel clearly restricted their influence.  However, President Obama’s reconsideration of American-Israeli ties and his desire to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis may only fuel concerns that he harbors Muslim sympathies.

Perhaps this is the crux of the matter – President Obama can afford to exhibit political alliances with Muslims abroad since the rest of the world, sans Tea Party, views him as a Christian and his outreach as tolerance.  On the contrary, perhaps he distances himself domestically given the perception of Islam underlying a number of issues: 9/11, a rocky relationship with Israel, the elusive goal of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, the perennial Iranian nuclear issue, and, of course, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The rise of the Tea Party’s nativist movement likely explains a certain public aversion to Islam.

As I finished this thought, I wondered whether Hinduism would ever alter the course of politics within the United States.  Some political organizations such as the Hindu Democrats (http://hindudemocrats.com/) and the Hindu American Foundation (http://www.hafsite.org/) have recently enjoyed wider press coverage, but for the most part, Hindus comprise less than 1% of the general American population.  Maybe this is why politicians can visit our congregations with impunity – we have not demonstrated the population or financial numbers to matter much to American politics.